So this doesn’t happen often, but after making the waffles with homemade blueberry jam, there was a little bit of jam and cream left over. I know. Gasps all round. How could there be jam and cream left over? Well, somehow there was a glitch in the matrix and there was. So then the question emerged – what does one do with a spoonful of leftover jam and a dollop of cream? I know that the obvious answer is “eat it Katie!” but, this happened on a day when another anomalous thing occurred. I woke up early enough and felt energetic enough to cook breakfast rather than just toast some bread. This happened on a week day people!
But before we riddle, lets get to the real business of this post – goodbyes.
And so it is time for another goodbye. This time it’s my Extension 1 English class that i’m farewelling. Of course, my farewells happen with cake. After all, a class party without cake is just a class. Not that my classes are boring…
In this class we study an unusual topic that is all about challenging the things in this world that we suppose to be true. My students grappled with complex intellectual concepts that sometimes resulted in some minds being blown. But these girls persevered and trusted me when I kept telling them that it would all make sense soon. I’m so grateful to have had the privilege to teach such clever, hard working and all round cheerful girls. They tackled every challenge with unwavering good humour and this even extended to the difficult task I gave them for our final class: bring in dessert that reflected the elective that they studied this year (Textual Dynamics).
There were:
pancakes with bacon and maple syrup to challenge the conventions of breakfast foods being either sweet or savoury (not to mention eating breakfast for afternoon tea!)
intertextual foodstuffs with monopoly house fruitcake
a deconstructionist eton mess
texturally dynamic rocky road (puns galore!)
They set the bar pretty high, so I had to pull out all the stops to bake a textually dynamic cake. After considering some of the texts we have studied, in particular, the graphic novel ‘Building Stories’ by Chris Ware which looks remarkably like a board game, I thought, why not make something that looks like a cake but is not a cake?
See? Looks like a chocolate cake, but isn’t a cake.
What is it?
It’s a pinata!
It looked like a cake, tasted like a cake, but when we cut it open and lollies spilled out it became clear that it was a pinata! A cakey, tasty pinata but a pinata nonetheless. This was such a fun cake to make and eat and I felt like it reflected the atmosphere of our classes perfectly.
Thanks for being such great students! <3
Pinata Cake Assembly Instructions
Firstly, you need to make your cake. I used this Chocolate Cake recipe (which is pretty much my go-to recipe)
Next, using a scone or cookie cutter, cut a hole in the centre of each layer of cake and remove the circle (to eat later, but keep the circle from the top layer of cake!) Then layer each slice of cake, using the icing to keep it all stuck together.
Pour in your lollies (I used jaffas and smarties) so that they just reach the height of the second last layer of cake.
Place the final circle of cake on top of the lollies making sure that the top is level
For the month of September Meredith from the Poco Loco Olsons challenged us to experiment with soda bread. Soda Bread is a non-yeasted bread and is instead leavened with baking soda (Bi-Carb Soda if you’re in Australia with me!).
Does anyone else feel like their ‘to do’ list just keeps getting longer and longer? It’s like the list hydra, for every task I cross off two more take its place. Its a bit like that with my ‘to bake/cook’ list. Soda bread has been on my list of things to bake for a long, long time and, despite its relative simplicity, it’s one that I have just never gotten around to. As part of my decision this holidays to try to reignite some dearly missed creativity, I thought it was time I joined in a Daring Bakers Challenge. Embarrassingly, I don’t think i’ve participated for three or four years. Actually, I almost didn’t get this month’s challenge done. Oops!
And we have hit that time again. That bitter sweet time when we farewell the Year 12 students who are about to go out into the world and begin their adult lives. I haven’t written a post like this in so long because each year i’ve been so overwhelmed with life that I just haven’t had time to even consider writing a post. So to even out the score, I have a couple of farewell baking posts to share with you.
